Dons1957,
I know what you mean about work taking up your time so not to worry.
RSSI can be found using your software. Look at the logging function and you will find a column marked RSSI. It's a measure of relative signal strength. By comparing the RSSI value on a quiet but adjecnt freq to those in question, you can quickly determine if there is an actual signal present.
If there is a signal present, then the next part is to determine wether it's an internally generated scanner signal, or from another source. You can disconnect the antenna and see if it goes away. If it does then it's not being generated by the scanner. It could be something in the house.
I won't go into anymore detail here, now, but as you see it can get pretty complicated to locate the source.
One thing I do want to comment on though is your statement about not using the search function anymore. Don't be discouraged first of all. The "LockOut" feature of the scanner works just as well in the search function as it does elswhere. When I am about to do a search and save I try to do just the search part for a few minutes first: looking for birdees, pagers and things that will cause the scanner to hangup. If I find any then I will lock them out and when I'm reasonably sure I got them taken care of I'll start the search and save.
Foolproof? Nope. But it does make life simpler when I go to researching whatever the scanner captured.
Which brings me to another point I would like to make. A couple of people have suggested forgoing using the search function and relying on what's in the RR data base. That's all and good; but the thing to remember is that that info comes from folks like you and me. We went out and found it, researched it and SUBMITTED the data to RR. TADA! lol
Research is not for everyone and I have no problem with the folks that don't do it. But many of us enjoy doing it and don't have a problem with putting in the time it takes to do it right. Case in point. In my area a city department went off the city system several months ago. From the house I searched everywhere I could think of. Couldnt find them. They were not using either the city's or countys trunked system. One day I managed to get a couple of hours of free time during the day and parked nearby to them. Put the scanner in Close Capture and waited. An hour later I had two freqs found and verified by what I was hearing. I came home, went to the FCC data base and did a search on those freqs and discovered that they had bought themselves their very own low power radio system. I can't hear them from the house. Have to be withen a mile or so to hear them. Is the info useful? Sure it is if I'm downtown during any of the major yearly events that take place there. Wish I could hear them from here, but oh well <lol>. I'll be submitting the new data to the database this weekend as well as corrections to the exsisting data so that others can have access to the data.
The point being, don't be to quick to stop using a pretty neat feature. With the help available here, I'm sure we can find out what's going on. Need to go for now; supper! YUM!
Wayne...